


His Place

by Nununununu



Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Historical, Arranged Marriage, Breaking Celibacy Vows, Consensual Sex, Don't copy to another site, Falling In Love, First Time, Gentle Sex, Getting to Know Each Other, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Kissing, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Oral Sex, Priests, Religious Conflict, Royalty, Strangers to Lovers, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:14:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26612779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: “You have been chosen,” The woman in armour said.Taken from the sanctuary of his church without a choice in the matter, the last thing Marik expected was to end up obliged to set aside his vows and wed.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character, Priest Forced To Give Up His Vows For Political Reasons/His Arranged Marriage Husband
Comments: 14
Kudos: 116
Collections: Fic In A Box





	His Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thatgothlibrarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatgothlibrarian/gifts).



> Set in a past and world that is more or less adjacent to ours (just in case, includes a deliberate tense change).

“You have been chosen,” The woman in armour said.

She stared down at Marik as she reigned in her horse, sword strapped at her hip and her weathered face unreadable under her helmet. The morning sun glinted off the armour garbing her subordinates lined in the churchyard; on the spears held straight in their hands.

“My place is here,” Marik folded his hands respectfully in front of his robes. A cluster of villagers hung back in the distance, agog at the presence of the soldiers, not daring to approach. A couple of youths brave enough to pass by a little closer on the way back to the fields after snatching an illicit break, making a poor show of not gawking as they went by. The church stood quiet at Marik’s back, cool and shadowed inside.

“You are mistaken in imagining that you have a choice,” The woman replied.

And so Marik was taken.

The youngest of the soldiers, a youth somewhere in his early twenties, escorted him onto a cart, holding a hand up for Marik to cling onto for balance in deference to his bad knee. Accepting it only as to refuse would be rude, Marik gave the lad a slight smile and then sat there like cargo, while the soldiers were forced to ride at the same slow crawl as the cart, giving Marik plenty of time to watch the church first recede behind him and then the village, his parishioners emerging cautiously out of their houses to lower their heads to him in passing – the nods the most they dared give. Even the mayor, stood by the village hall, looked at the captain doubtfully and didn’t risk protesting.

Wishing he could offer greater reassurance, Marik raised a hand in blessing to them all, to these people who had made a space for the foreign exile who had washed up at their shoreline all those years ago, half drowned.

He’d been happy here, unlike in the harsh hungry lands of Drovik, his own former country. Happy in the service of the god he had found out there amongst the grey of the sea and here amongst the little crude stone houses and the moorland wind. He’d been happy away from the expectations that had followed him throughout childhood and the disappointments that had been all he’d brought.

The church had become his sanctuary, built of moorland stone and thick, uneven glass; a place of refuge that he’d extended to others with open arms. The villagers his family; his faith in his every breath.

It was all he’d ever wanted – that surety, that peace.

Sheep bleated at the passing of first the soldiers, then the cart. The captain – if that was her rank – set riders to streak ahead of the procession on the dusty unpaved path and then circle back to them, as if there was anything that could be a threat here; as if there was something to be wary of lurking in woods dappling the gentle hills between the fields.

“May I ask if you are concerned about bandits?” Marik enquired when she was within earshot, his tone modulated so not to show offence. Not humility – he knew little about this army or their leader or who any of the country’s rulers were beyond the oil painting of the royal family displayed in the hall as in every village – the three figures of the Queen, the Heir Apparent and the Spare.

But there was no need to antagonise his captors – they were treating him reasonably aside from the fundamental fact of the kidnap, the youngest soldier passing him a flask of sweet apple cider after a few hours and a couple of plums picked from a nearby tree, tossed over to Marik with a grin of approval at his successful catch.

While Marik had no fear of them, he also had no reason to antagonise. He would take up the issue of his removal from his church with the captain’s master.

The journey to the capital took over two weeks.

Marik grew more and more baffled throughout it – the procession grew on the fifth day to a small caravan, his cart exchanged for a proper carriage and a gaggle of attendants appointed to see to his needs.

In the habit of attending to what few simple requirements he had himself, he inwardly chafed at the attention in truth. But the captain made clear he was expected to submit and the youngest soldier gave Marik a companionably empathetic smile as the attendants primped and fussed over him, trimming and combing his hair when the procession made camp for the evening, massaging soft oils into his skin to ease out the day’s aches – as if he had any, cargo as he was! – even the calluses on his palms from gardening in the churchyard and repairs to the church beginning to ease.

Other clothes were offered, richer and more colourful than any he’d worn since his childhood, but he calmly insisted on keeping his robes, which were therefore laundered and returned to him in as pristine a condition as could be achieved after the usage of several years.

A seamstress had even created a second set for him by the time they reached the capital – a kindness Marik had no choice but to receive with thanks. He caught the young soldier eyeing him – the youth seemed to have a little more freedom, oddly, than his fellows, but then again he seemed to have been given the task of ensuring Marik remain in line – and the lad’s face broke once more into a smile.

Marik found himself smiling back unintentionally. A faint flush rose in his cheeks as he turned his attention back to the land he was leaving behind him – greater number of stone houses stood around them now, the countryside dropping away to make place for trading places set outside the city, and Marik had never seen so many people, had never imagined so much activity.

Despite his embarrassment – what would his god think? – he was nonetheless intensely grateful when the youngest soldier rode a little closer to his carriage as the procession passed through the huge gate set into the immense walls surrounding the city proper.

“Here,” The soldier wheeled away once they were winding past a crowded market, his fellows holding people back with the presence of their spears. Marik was receiving much attention, to his discomfort, but the carriage possessed neither shutters nor curtains, and he consoled himself with prayer, starting a little on registering the smooth wooden cup of honeyed mead the young lad offered in to him.

“I forgot to ask if priests drink,” There was an apology in the youth’s otherwise lively eyes, “But as you drank the cider –”

“It is permitted within reason, outside of the church grounds,” Sipping at the refreshment appreciatively, Marik decided to take a chance, “I don’t suppose you could tell me why I have been taken.”

“Chosen,” The youth glanced around them for a moment, his superior busy ordering a cart of vegetables overturned on the cobbled street cleared so the caravan could proceed. There was sympathy this time in the lad’s face, “And no, I’m sorry. It would mean my neck if I said. You’ll find out soon enough, but –”

He hesitated, clearly weighing up how much to say, his elbow on the windowsill of the carriage as he leaned in closer to be heard, his weight off his horse. His skin was pure and clear bronze, just a hint of golden stubble visible at his jawline, and Marik looked at him and thought of all manner of things a priest should not think.

He took a breath in.

“You have done me kindness enough,” He made his voice firm to cover for the moment’s weakness – he would pray twice over tonight.

“It won’t be _bad_ ,” The lad said in a rush, as if by saying it fast enough he would make it true, “If I can, I will –” He stopped, evidently editing himself, then continued with a concern he couldn’t quite hide, “I am sorry you have been uprooted so. But it surely won’t be bad.”

They took him into one of the many buildings surrounding the great palace up on the hill at the centre of the city, where his attendants first brushed the dirt of the journey off him, then took his robes and poured him into a scented bath, while one cleaned his nails and another his back.

The whole thing was ridiculous. Also, immodest. Marik could not prevent himself from flushing deeply, although he set his jaw and insisted on washing himself when the attendant scrubbing his back sought to continue lower.

The seamstress having apparently fashioned a third set of robes – or something approaching robes, given they were of far too rich and smart a material, and in dark greys and earthen browns rather than familiar black – Marik found himself dressed in them despite his polite protest, his hair brushed and fastened in a more complicated arrangement than his usual simple style, highly polished boots provided for his feet and then a golden ribbon wound around his hands.

“What is this?” Disliking the prospect of being so bound, he went to draw away before the attendant could finish.

“You will submit to it,” A young woman he hadn’t seen before swept into the tiled room, the attendants falling back with respectful murmurs. Given the finery of her clothes and the jewelled diadem on her brow, she was someone of importance. Given her obvious facial resemblance to the middlemost figure depicted in the painting displayed in the village hall, Marik considered whether to follow as the attendants next went down to their knees.

He held his ground. He was no genuine guest here, after all.

“He passes muster?” The young woman had already turned away from him to address the head of the attendants.

“In so far as is possible for a village priest, ma’am,” The older woman bowed her head. As if in gentle reminder, she bit her lip and then said, “He is the Chosen.”

“Indeed,” Her tone said this was regrettable. Frowning lightly, the Heir Apparent gestured brusquely to Marik, “Come along, then.”

He was no longer cargo. Instead he was to be a puppy. Swallowing pique as his bad knee twinged, Marik prayed for patience even as he considered refusing.

The Heir Apparent glanced over her shoulders at his delay, a warning clear in her eyes.

Her response was pointed, “Did you imagine you have a choice?”

She took him, randomly, to what turned out to be a wedding ceremony.

Marik nearly stumbled when the guards opened the double doors at the end of a long series of corridors onto a crowded great hall filled with countless courtiers – and the Queen and the Spare seated, impossibly, at the end of the room upon grand thrones atop of raised dais.

So he was to officiate? Why not choose a city priest? And why had they not told him?

Baffled by the secrecy and the charade, Marik approached the dais down the walkway the courtiers made for him, as the soldiers appeared to flank him, the captain at his back.

There was no sign of the youngest one, his golden lad. Sending a prayer to his god watching all this, Marik could only offer up a feeling of regret mingled with relief. The youth had simply been doing as ordered along with performing the odd kindness for a priest entirely out of his depth, after all. There was no reason other than how lost he was for Marik to have found himself attached to the lad.

He didn’t even know the soldier’s name.

“Is that it?” The Queen’s face was craggy, generous grey streaks in her bronze hair under her crown. Beside her, the Spare was a study in disinterest, chin propped on his fist and a leg slung over one side of the throne.

While the Heir Apparent resembled their mother, the Spare couldn’t have looked less like her. Even Marik’s young soldier appeared closer visually than the pale youth sprawled in his seat.

Then, yawning, the Spare glanced briefly over at Marik, and something spiteful rose in his face.

“ _Really_ , Margaret?” He addressed the Queen by her first name? Judging by the repressed murmurs of the watching courtiers, this was not the first time. The Spare sat a little higher, if only to flick his fingers at Marik disdainfully, “You do your prince wrong, arranging to wed him to this gelded prick? A heathen barbarian at least would know how to use his functioning cock.”

He referred to himself in the third person? Although he internally twitched, Marik let the insults wash over him – in his former homeland before his exile, he had heard worse.

And besides, the Spare was incorrect. Marik might not _use_ his cock, correct – might not have ever used it, given his young age on being exiled from Drovik – but he was far from gelded.

He simply had sworn his life to his god and his virginity went hand in hand with it.

“You are forgiven for your ignorance,” He informed the Spare gently when the youth paused to gather more spit in readiness for further vitriol, although he had not been given permission to speak. He ignored the ripple of shock that passed through the assembled crowd, folding his hands peacefully in front of him as if the ribbon binding them didn’t exist, “But you should not speak to your mother and ruler that way.”

“You _dare_?” Something immensely like hatred flooded the Spare’s face this time, along with a scowling flush, “You pathetic worm.”

The Queen, who had been watching her son like one might a usually pampered pet acting irritatingly enough to be danger of receiving a kick, raised an eyebrow a slight amount.

This seemed to be a signal – the captain, over to one side, loosened her sword. 

“So perhaps the priest does have balls,” A woman’s voice commented besides him before the captain could properly draw, and Marik stiffened, realising the Heir Apparent had come to stand next to him, her hand closing vicelike around his elbow. Her expression was a smile worn as a mask; her grip unforgiving. Her gaze remained on her mother, “This one has been Chosen. Don’t let Baird tempt you into killing him yet.”

“I am a man of the cloth,” Was the best protest Marik could come up with in the face of being potentially murdered, given his mind was awhirl with everything that was happening.

Why go to the effort of bringing him here, if he was not to conduct the wedding? He thought longingly of the moorland and his simple life there; his little church.

“And that makes you impervious to steel?” The Heir Apparent seemed coolly amused for the brief moment she glanced at him, before continuing to address the Queen, “Mother. My Queen. Has the prophecy not been spoken; the deal not been made? If the Spare does not wed a Droviksman before sunrise on the morrow, you know what will be decreed.”

“ _War_ ,” The Spare leaned forwards hungrily in his seat.

So _that_ was why.

Something going numb inside him, Marik barely registered the pale youth’s reaction despite the thinly veiled desire for bloodshed in the Spare’s entire demeanour. His mind had belatedly caught up to him; he knew the reason for the ribbon binding him now.

Were he not a priest sworn to chastity to his god, he would have realised a lot sooner. A golden marriage ribbon. Binding _his_ hands.

“No,” He would have stumbled back a step in sheer denial, had the Heir Apparent’s grip not tightened painfully around his elbow.

“Do you wish for war?” The Queen’s direct attention was on him abruptly, more terrifying than Marik had expected.

He should have no fear – his life belonged to his faith and his god. He _should_ have none, just as he should not have looked upon his golden soldier’s face and yearned for what he couldn’t have.

“N-no, Your Majesty.”

“Then kneel and keep your head,” The Heir Apparent caught hold of his shoulder and, never mind that he was taller than her, applied pressure until Marik found that even his good knee unintentionally buckled.

Swallowing convulsively, he unevenly knelt.

“I will officiate,” The Heir Apparent declared, as the Queen gestured for the Spare to descend from the dais and stand at Marik’s side.

An attendant passed the Heir Apparent another golden ribbon.

“ _No_ ,” Burst out of Marik without his intending it at all.

“No?” The Spare sounded delighted. A devilish light entering his eyes, he turned to the captain, “Take this bloodless gelding to the Interrogators and leave him there for an hour. I’m certain they can persuade him to reveal the reason for his delightful objection. I am suspecting the ‘innocent’ holier-than-thou act to be a guise for a spy.”

“I am but a priest and so _cannot wed_ ,” The tip of a spear jabbed into his lower back as hard hands grasped his upper arms, dragging Marik to his feet.

“Really, Baird,” Tutting in disapproval, the Heir Apparent stepped to one side.

The Queen wasn’t even looking, busy giving orders of her own to one of her councillors, while the Spare gave him a blank stare.

“Who the fuck cares about that?” He gave Marik a little spitefully cheerful wave as the priest was dragged from the crowded room, “Oh, and by the way?”

The guards paused in their manhandling to ensure Marik heard this passing threat.

The Spare’s mouth twisted in a mockery of a grin, “There is to be a public consummation after the wedding. You won’t object to me fucking you in front of all these _charming_ people, right?”

“Stop what you’re doing right now!” A familiar voice cried out in horror as an equally familiar figure flung the heavy doors open to the interrogation room.

Strapped stripped to the waist to the rack, Marik panted around the sour gag stuffed into his mouth, sweat pouring down his face from both the proximity of the glowing brand and the sheer relief of the narrow escape.

His soldier? The youth stood framed in the doorway, breathing hard, appearing as if he had heard the news of Marik’s fate and had run the length of the city in the hope of averting it. His bronze skin was appealingly flushed, golden hair damp beneath his helmet, chest rising hard beneath his armour as he near clung to the doors.

He was the best thing Marik had ever seen.

“Lord Baird’s orders,” The masked interrogator grunted.

“ _Lord_ Baird isn’t here now,” Near staggering into the horrible room, the soldier began tugging at the chains fastened punishingly tight around Marik’s wrists and ankles with no care for the proximity of the brand whatsoever, “Release the holy priest immediately!”

“Yes, sir,” Withdrawing the brand quickly, the interrogator didn’t quite sigh.

Shivering with adrenalin and pain as he was, Marik still remained alert enough to give his young soldier a swift searching look.

Because, wait – sir?

“I _am_ sorry for the deception,” the golden lad grimaced, “And the kidnapping and –” He gestured at the horrible room, even as the Interrogator unfastened the last of the chains, catching Marik as his legs unintentionally went out, “All of this.” Regret coloured the youth’s voice, “I told Mother it was a terrible idea.”

“You – you’re the actual Spare,” Gasping, Marik clung to him as much as he knew he should not.

Apology was clear in the youth’s resultant wince, “Guilty as charged.”

“Baird’s my cousin,” Yan – as Marik’s young soldier and _the second in line to the throne_ had requested the priest call him – or Prince Eifion Yannick Archambault III, Duke of Glovenny, Castlebrook and the Seven Holdings, as ran his proper title, poured Marik a fresh glass of clean sweet water as the attendants cleaned the trials of the interrogation room off his skin with warm scented cloths.

“He doesn’t resemble you,” Marik winced at the obviousness of the remark, “I do apologise, Your –”

“Please don’t,” Yan held up a hand. An attendant put a plate of delicately formed refreshments in it, which he offered to Marik, “If anyone is owed apology after apology, it is yourself. The prophecy requires me to wed an enemy of the state – the ambassadors to Drovik stated as such – and my mother ordered a suitable loophole found, given she could not bear to see me wed to the aged bully they offered. Given he had already buried three wives and four husbands all well before their time, I was weak enough to be persuaded that, through kidnapping, we could make an otherwise peaceful Droviksman an enemy.”

“Yet you disguised yourself as a soldier,” Grateful when the attendants next wrapped him in cloud-like heated towels, given the intense agony of being undressed in front of Yan, Marik didn’t even object when they next began to unpick his tangled hair, blotting out the drying blood as they went.

His hurts were minor compared to what they had been, although when his lad had first set eyes on them, Marik had thought the youth might actually weep.

Yan had also radiated anger, which didn’t perhaps bear well for Baird.

“I am a soldier,” Yan didn’t seem offended now, only concerned for Marik’s wellbeing as he offered him a fresh plate of cheeses, this time, and piquant sun-grapes, more luxury than Marik had known in either his former country or his church and little village. “Baird stands in for me – the threats on my life are near constant. He does well,” There was a shadow in his eyes and shame on his face, “I would stand there myself, but Mother – the Queen – refuses it. And so I play my part but, when the time comes that I’m informed I should wed a stranger or doom our country to war, I run away with the army to oversee my husband’s selection and try to ensure he is kind, only for my terrible cousin to send me on a wild goose chase to keep me away from the palace when it comes to the ceremony.”

“You chose me,” Marik was abruptly certain of this. Shivers of quite a different kind to those from cold chased over his skin.

“In a sense,” Yan pressed his lips together in guilt as he inclines his head, “And now I’m giving you the choice to say no, as I wanted to so badly all along.”

They wed in privacy.

The second time, that is – the one that, in the future, Marik slowly came to allow himself to think of as real. The prospect sent a thrill through him, although it ought not.

The first time was in front of witnesses – the Queen, the Heir Apparent and the false Spare, the courtiers flanked by dozens of grim unsmiling Drovik warriors, disapproval clear on their faces although the prophecy and deal had apparently been fulfilled.

There would be no war – that was, unless they found another excuse. Marik played his role, working as an interpreter also, ensuring his former people inserted no hidden clauses into the treaties they insisted were written in their own language.

The Queen slowly came to lower the rigid angle of her shoulders a bit. Baird looked mutinous, until a particularly rugged and hulking Droviksman took an interest in him. After that, he just looked well fucked. After a while, he even stopped threatening to have Marik sent to the interrogation room again.

Yan was off with the army some of the time, although his mother had insisted he leave his soldiering days behind him and, now the threat was lifted, embrace his role as a prince. Were he to run off with his company again, she had warned, it would be worth more than Yan’s fellow soldiers’ lives.

They hadn’t fulfilled the vows in public, in the sense that Baird had threatened.

There hadn’t been any consummation at all. Marik tried to appreciate his husband’s kindness as fully as it deserved and the political sacrifices Yan had convinced his mother to make to pacify his former country’s rulers – he truly _did_ appreciate it, just as he still longed for his village and his church, but –

But waking up day after day with Yan’s golden head beside him in their marriage bed, as the young prince came to be more and more by his side –

It was a challenge. It was a challenge because, more and more, he _wanted_ –

No.

Marik hadn’t wanted to live in the palace, but he was supposed to be visible, a reminder that the Duke of Glovenny was wed to what had been the enemy. He found himself slipping away to go for walks through the city instead of attending court and then found that Yan had covered for him, before slipping away himself to track Marik down, taking him to some corner of the city Marik had yet to discover or treating him to some intricately created delicacy he hadn’t tasted yet or to an ancient little church that stood buried _beneath_ a new one, so that they had to climb down steep uneven steps and duck through a half-fallen doorway to enter.

The peace within the torchlit chapel was the nearest he’d felt to his own little church back on the moors. After that, Marik went back there most days.

He still couldn’t reconcile with his attraction to his husband. He wasn’t a priest any more – how could he be, now he was wed to a human man in place of his god? But Yan was almost infuriatingly kind and almost infuriatingly patient, and it was uncharitable of Marik to think of the younger man in such terms, and he only did because with every passing day that he woke up in the same bed as his husband, he yearned ever more to reach out to his husband and draw him in and –

He _burned_.

In the end, it took them nearly half a year.

Marik woke up early and the everything was golden, the first of the day’s light pouring in through the windows, the smell of Autumn crisp on the air and a few red leaves blown in onto the sill. Yan was a study in bronze next to him, hair aflame, the new growth of his beard emphasising the kind-hearted nobility of his face. Lying contentedly next to him, not feeling the urge to rise for once, Marik studied the graze of his husband’s eyelids against his cheeks and the quiet rise and fall of Yan’s chest as he breathed.

He was reaching out before he knew it to touch the back of his knuckles to the sweet line of a cheekbone – his lad was still in there, so was the man.

“Good morning,” Yan surfaced with a smile and Marik couldn’t, he couldn’t –

He had never kissed anyone before. But he leaned in and waited until understanding crossed his husband’s face, followed swiftly by surprise and then delight.

“You’re sure?” Yan brushed his thumb across Marik’s lower lip, and that fire leapt inside him ever higher.

“I’m sure.”

It was almost frightening at first, in truth, the depth of emotions that came over him as his husband’s mouth moved sweetly against his – the kiss light at first, until Marik moaned and rolled over on top of Yan, barely even remembering to be careful of his bad knee. Yan’s hand wrapped warm around his hip and Marik couldn’t keep himself from moving against him, couldn’t keep himself from telling Yan how good he felt, how amazing, how perfect his husband was and always have been.

“I’m hardly _perfect_ ,” Yan scrunched his nose, “But you – you, Marik, with your quiet and your calm and that _smile_ you think I don’t notice –”

There wasn’t much talking after that – he was so gentle, and Marik couldn’t stop moving against him, excitement swelling ever greater inside him as their limbs slid together, a burst of heat going off in his chest like a flare as he felt Yan’s cock against his hip.

He couldn’t – he shouldn’t –

He _wanted_ to. He wanted –

The explicitness of his thoughts made Marik moan. He angled his body down further over Yan’s so the younger man’s cock was caught between them, pressing up against Marik’s stomach through their nightshirts.

“Are you sure?” Yan was flushed, his hair stray over his forehead, his beard a little rumpled from sleep. Marik was running his hands over his husband wherever he could – Yan’s throat and shoulders, his arms, his chest; feeling as much of his body as he dared. Yan bit his lip, even as Marik bent to request another kiss, “We don’t have to –”

“Do _you_ want to?” Marik thought he knew the answer, given the way Yan’s cock jerked when he couldn’t keep himself from moving against it a little, clenching his hands in the sheets to hold back from doing more, “I want to, so long as you want to – I – please –”

_I need you_.

“Marik – _yes_ ,” Catching hold of him more closely, Yan rolled Marik over on the bed until he was clambering on top of him, guiding their nightshirts up as high as their thighs, a golden eyebrow going up in smiling enquiry, “Yes?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Marik tugged Yan’s nightshirt up the rest of the way and then there was his husband’s cock, and there was his hand reaching for it.

“Oh –” The first touch of his fingers against it felt like – like –

Marik could only think of the sunlight pouring down on them and the softness there of Yan’s skin, softness and hardness beneath, and he was sliding down on the mattress underneath his husband so he could raise his mouth to it without even really thinking about it.

The taste was – He’d never allowed himself to think about the fact it _would_ taste. But it did, and the fact that this was his husband’s cock he was pressing kisses against, before daring to lap his tongue over the head in darting little licks, not quite brave enough to go further yet, but wanting to, _wanting_ to –

“Marik – _Marik_ –” His arms shaking slightly, his head bowed down towards the pillows as his whole body curved in towards Marik, Yan was clutching at the sheets himself by the time Marik had to stop his experimental investigation, because his jaw was starting to ache. He’d grown a little bolder, daring to press his mouth to the base of the shaft, to work his lips over his husband’s balls. Yan was panting, a slight sheen of sweat standing out at his hairline, his gaze gone very dark, “Come here.”

Soothing Marik’s chest and stomach as Marik drew his nightshirt off over his head, Yan kissed his husband’s jaw, then his throat, working his way down to his chest, seeming to want to leave no area of Marik’s body untouched by fingers and mouth as he went.

“Yan! Oh –!” Marik had no chance of keeping his hands out of that golden hair when Yan’s warm, generous mouth found his own cock, Yan shooting a smile up at him before letting the head just sit on his tongue a moment, letting Marik get used to the sight of it, to the feel of it – it was almost overwhelming. Just _seeing_ Yan like that, with his lips around Marik’s cock –

Then, very gently, Yan started to suck. Just slowly, leisurely, no rush about it, his hands soothing over Marik’s sides, his thighs, while Marik did his utmost not to thrust.

He was groaning almost too loudly, he knew it – Yan had a whole section of the palace he had rarely used before their wedding, but people might still be in earshot beyond the open window – the world was carrying on in the city –

Then Yan drew a hand up between Marik’s legs to lightly cup his balls, and Marik realised that his husband’s other hand was down between his own legs, Yan’s face very flushed, and Marik wanted to do that for him even as he very badly wanted to watch.

“Oh – oh –” Everything seemed to come together, the pleasure so intense he was almost afraid of what might happened, but it wasn’t – it wasn’t –

It wasn’t frightening. As climax rolled over him and swept him up, it was strangely close to that peace he’d so longed for – he felt unexpectedly in touch with his faith, with the person he was before he’d lost his little church.

Coaxing Yan into rocking in against him after, his husband’s cock rubbing against his own softening one until it became overwhelming and Marik had to take him in hand and then mouth again instead –

He’d been so conflicted over giving up his vows; he’d struggled so over reconciling his kidnap and arranged marriage with the life he’d intended to spend devoted to his god.

But Yan was everything – Marik’s faith was everything –

In this moment, it felt _right_ – right to love his husband and right to love his god. Right to be here, in this bed, with Yan gasping as he came and Marik needing only the knowledge that _he_ had done this to come _again_ , shaking with the intensity of it, untouched.

They lay together contently after, Yan wrapped around him, his husband’s chest warm and steady against his back. Marik could feel the younger man’s heart beating.

“Do you want to go back?” Yan brushed his lips against the rim of Marik’s ear in the softest caress. He’d fetched a clean cloth and offered to get Marik breakfast or a snack to eat, while Marik had found them a drink.

All Marik wanted was to hold him and be held, their fingers and legs tangled, something Yan proved to have no objection to.

“Back?” His mind is a little slow to parse the meaning of the question, still caught up in the memory of what they’d done together and the wonder of just lying like this with his husband now.

_Oh._

“To –” The little village; to his church.

“I’m sorry you had to give up your vows,” A frown creases Yan’s brow. He’s biting his lip when Marik turns enough to see his husband’s face, “I can’t say that enough. Politics – it’s all beyond me, in honesty, as you must well be aware; I’m lucky my sister’s the Heir and I’m only the Spare. But all this about the prophecy and the deal – I’ve always failed to understand why any of it was necessary.” His gaze softens, “I’m a terrible person though; I can’t regret that it resulted in my meeting you.”

“Or our marriage?” Marik has to kiss him for that, delighted when Yan returns it at once, hand slipping into his hair.

“I can’t regret that either,” Yan’s smile is like the sun, “Or the sex.”

Marik can’t find any regret inside him either, “Or the sex.”

And it’s true.

As for whether he wants to visit his old village, his church?

“I think my life is here now,” He reaches for the answer inside him and this is it – this is almost it. “My life is with you.”

Now that is it. With Yan and his god. Neither one nor the other, but both. He might not be a priest anymore, but he has his husband and his faith.

“Mm,” Feathering his fingers through Marik’s hair, Yan presses kisses to his forehead, his nose, his lips, “We could always run away. I’m good at that. My mother wouldn’t genuinely harm anyone as a result; she was just afraid.”

“No more running away,” Marik kisses him back firmly, rolls on top of him to hold him down against the sheets.

“No more running,” A little grin quirks his lips, “Although I could make Baird officially the Spare. He’d like that. And then we could go wherever we wanted.”

“I don’t think that would be wise,” Or allowed. Marik can’t help but return a little grin of his own though, even as he begins moving against his husband’s body again, “But – going back, perhaps for a visit? Can I think about it?”

“Of course,” Yan moved back against him, his touch just as sweet as his gaze, “Take as long as you need.”

_Fin._


End file.
